


K-Watch

by Regarklipop



Category: One Direction (Band), Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Crossover, M/M, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-14
Updated: 2014-01-14
Packaged: 2018-01-08 17:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1135252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regarklipop/pseuds/Regarklipop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As one of the two heads of K-Watch, Zayn sees a lot at the Shatterdome. Louis and Liam are 98% of that a lot, but teaching a recently retrieved Mako Mori vocabulary words and quietly fanboying over Stacker Pentecost certainly counts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	K-Watch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [autopsyofwebs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/autopsyofwebs/gifts).



> So I tried my best to keep a general record of the Pacific Rim storyline but it probably does get fuzzy in some places. This is a universe altered fic for the challenge that letsgetsomecake and I have going. This week's challenge was Pacific Rim :D.

It’s bizarre, Zayn thinks, to not salute Stacker Pentecost and Tamsin Sevier. He’s not officially in the military, despite being the chief technician in LOCCENT, but the presence of the two Jaeger pilots is enough to nearly knock him off his feet.

This is why he’d joined the PPDC. To see the best of the best come together to protect the earth. It didn’t help that Zayn often got substantial crushes on them.

The other’s tease him about it; he’s just glad he hasn’t got “Kaiju Groupie” as a nickname. Still, he’d gotten a nudge and an eyebrow wiggle from Leigh-Anne who told him to “stop making googoo eyes at the Rangers love”.

It’s hard not to, Zayn sulks, Rangers are gorgeous and competent.

“Zaayynn, my partner in crime, my favourite K-Watch love, the man who named Scissure-” speaking of gorgeous.

“Lou…” It’s one thing for the rambunctious pilot to sit and joke around with Zayn when they’re eating their lunch, it’s another when Zayn is trying to do his job. Jaeger’s are a big lot to deal with, and ensuring that K-Watch and Engineering work seamlessly together feels like an endless job.

Lou throws his hands up.

“Just wondering if you’d seen any movement in The Breach. Liam and I are getting bored and are more than a little ready to see some action” he pouts at Zayn but when he makes a grab for Zayn’s braces, he manages to knock Louis’ hand away.

“Shit! Lou come on, I know that Liam isn’t bored, this is all you. You know I’m busy right now so-” 

The alarm goes off. Lou’s face immediately shifts from playful to serious as he waits for Zayn’s call. Zayn’s already bent over the monitors. He frowns at the sonar, the Kaiju is different than the standard long body they’ve seen so far. His eye whip over to the toxicity report, running numbers through his head as he thinks about the recently designed Serizawa Scale. He thinks of a designation name.

“Category II, nicknamed Onibaba, heading straight for Tokyo,” his brain flashes through the various Rangers they have on stand-by, briefly noting Louis’ loud inhale. “Coyote Tango, deploy, Havoc Victory, suit up.” He feels Lou’s hand rest warmly on his lower back before the man runs off.

He gets ready for action.

\---

Having a tiny girl running around the Shatterdome is a bizarre experience, but it’s really hard not to fall in love with Mako Mori, especially the way Ranger (soon to be Marshall) Pentecost goes all soft around her.

The excitement, of course, is curtailed by Ranger Sevier’s current condition, but Zayn’s trying to stay optimistic. Mako, being the ball of sunlight she is, certainly helps.

He’s currently in the cafeteria, playing flash cards with Mako to help her improve her English. She’s already got a good grasp of English sentence structure, and Zayn’s hoping that helping her to widen her vocabulary will help her impress the Marshall.

There are few things more important to Mako than impressing the Marshall. 

“For lunch, we are having rice, meat, and vegetables” Zayn lays down the flashcards for the nouns as he translates the sentence into (shaky) Japanese, and then has Mako repeat and explain as best she can in English. 

The lesson’s going very well, up until Stacker Pentecost himself comes into the cafeteria looking for Mako. As soon as she spots him, she’s up and out of her chair, her tiny boots clapping across the floor as she executes a bow before standing up straight, smiling when Pentecost bows back. 

“I hope everything has been going well Miss Mori,” he says in grave Japanese, briefly raising his eyes and giving Zayn a nod of acknowledgement. Carefully taking Mako’s hand as they walk towards the lunch line.

“For lunch, we are having rice, meat, and vegetables,” Zayn hears the pride in her voice, and although he misses the Marshall’s response he can see how impressed he is. 

“You’re good at that,” Zayn jumps, he hadn’t heard Liam come up behind him. He gives a grin as Liam sits down next to him, plopping a tray of food down in front of Zayn. “I figured you’d be hungry”.

“I am, thanks. I was in teacher’s college for English before I decided to go into the K-Watch training,” He digs into his chicken and nearly jumps out of his seat again when a tray is slammed onto the table on the other side of him.

“Can someone tell me why a group engineers thought it would be hilarious to make some alterations to our Jaeger?” He gives Zayn a look.

“I thought you’d been told that your Jaeger was being retrofitted to ensure that you and Liam don’t die from radiation poisoning, unless you’d like to of course?” Louis eyes narrow at Zayn before a grin breaks out all over his face. 

“I’m hoping this means Liam and I can finally go back on active duty after the shitstorm of Pentecost’s copilot seizing in the middle of a drift?” His tone is playful, but his face is stone. Louis had been concerned about Sevier. Everyone was still concerned about her.

“As long as you’ve had your check-up with the doctor you can go back into your jaeger no questions asked,” Louis gets bouncy in his seat, his entire body vibrating.

“Thanks Zayn,” Zayn turns back to Liam, whose soft smile warms Zayn’s heart. “He was really starting to jump on my last nerve”.

“Oi!”

The alarm goes off, Tendo’s voice already booming through the cafeteria

“Havoc Victory prepare for deployment, Duo Salute prepare for deployment, Zeta Stereo be on standby, we have a category III coming through The Breach.” Liam and Louis drop quick kisses on both his cheeks before running off. 

With Tendo running K-Watch, there honestly isn’t much for Zayn to do. There’s something amusing about all of the documentaries and tv shows that portray Shatterdomes as areas constantly in crisis, when the amount of hurry up and wait and carefully organised daily routines leaves more than a few people bored stiff when they aren’t doing their jobs. 

He thinks about hitching a ride into Tokyo, but decides to head up to K-Watch to observe Tendo Choi in his element. 

\---

He’s sleeping when Louis and Liam burst into his room, apparently unable to wait for a normal time before telling him that Leigh-Anne and Perrie had helped them take down a category III and isn’t that great Zayn?

“You both smell awful, go take a bloody shower before you talk to me,”

“So we can smell Gucci, Zayn?”

“Don’t ever claim Gucci as you,” Zayn mutters, rolling over to try and ignore Louis and Liam’s laughter. They’re always like this after a fight, close and able to predict each other and half their personality shared between them.

He shrieks when Louis shoves his disgusting sweaty face into Zayn’s neck and nuzzles. Then yells again as Liam picks him up off the bed, throws him over his shoulder and makes his way towards the washroom. 

Louis races ahead, nipping into the bathroom and turning on the shower, laughing as Liam drags Zayn into the spray, the two of them still fully clothed. 

Zayn resigns himself to another shower, hating how the only time the two of them can manage to overwhelm Zayn is after they’ve drifted.

“You two are going to get in so much shit for wasting water,”

“Hardly, we’re showering together, so we’re obviously saving water. C’mon babe, I’ll wash your luscious hair”, Liam puts Zayn down, shucking of his clothing before reaching for the shampoo and dumping a nice squirt into his palm. He waits while Zayn groans and takes of his own clothes, but when Liam starts massaging his scalp, Zayn can hardly complain. 

“You better make sure I get a nice warm towel after this,” Zayn leans into Liam’s fingers, sighing as they rub out the headache that had started earlier in the day. Louis’ cleaning off the sweat with a washcloth and some scented body wash (worth a bloody fortune) but his hand reaches out and he tweaks Zayn’s nipple.

“Of course love”.

\--- 

There are days when his job is shit.

“We’ve lost Jupiter Alto,” the K-Watch computer room is silent, the last moments of screaming still echoing in the room as the category III decimated the Jaeger and her pilots.

The worst part is Zayn had predicted this happening, had told Tendo that despite their skills as pilots, no Jaeger should go in without back-up, even with category III experience. Kaiju were too unpredictable, they always had an ace up their sleeve.

And now two pilots are dead. 

He barely recalls sending out the order for Zeta Stereo and Duo Salute to finish off the Kaiju, knowing it was overkill when the thing was already injured but unwilling to take chances when he’d just lost people to it. 

The next half hour he waits out in silence, when the all clear comes through, he huffs out a breath, quietly calls Tendo to take his place and leaves HQ.

It’s sometimes difficult to find a quiet place in the Shatterdome, so Zayn is thankful that he has a single room to himself, he strips off to his boxer-briefs and crawls into bed, knows that he should be out there, but Tendo is kind, knows that losses like these hit Zayn hard.

He falls asleep.

\---

Louis and Liam avoid him for days. By day ten, Zayn’s spending time in K-Science because he’s not sure he can look at Liam and Louis in the face even if they were to talk to him again.

It’s a stupid decision because Harry and Niall are obnoxiously in love and beyond adorable about it.

“So why haven’t you talked to them yet?” Harry’s writing scrawls incomprehensibly across his chalkboard, doodles here and there interrupting long algorithms about Kaiju landings and size. On the other side of the lab Niall is elbow deep in a part of a Kaiju’s stomach, listening to the conversation while trying to glean some knowledge about Kaiju eating habits beyond ‘everything humanity loves’.

“They have a legitimate reason to be angry with me,” Zayn begins, picking up a piece of chalk and starting a small sketch near the edge of the blackboard. “My decision to not send back-up meant that one of their own died. They probably feel betrayed, like they’re not sure if they can trust me.”

“Yes but you can’t know that unless you go talk to them,” Niall pipes in. “And it’s all fair and good to let them be angry with you but just being angry is meaningless. They should be allowed some time to know that you know that they’re mad at you,” Niall throws the part of the stomach he’s working on back into a preservation tank.

When Zayn looks back at Harry, he takes one look at the dumbstruck look of awe that he’s got leveled at Niall and makes his way out of the lab. 

\---

“I’m sorry,” Tendo Choi looks deeply regretful when he delivers his apology, but Zayn can’t fully accept it.

“No, this was a team effort. I should have pushed back harder when you said we didn’t need back-up. I… I’m not happy with how it turned out. I’m sure you aren’t either” Tendo shakes his head gravely. “But we made the decision we made and two people are dead,” Zayn feels his face crumple a little.

“We’ll share the blame for this, although I claim 80% of it” Tendo says, then laughs dryly. “What kind of circle jerk idiocy is it that we’re arguing over who takes the blame when they’ve barely been in the ground a week,” Zayn laughs a moment, before biting his lip and looking at Tendo, wanting to say something but not knowing what.

“Ah don’t look at me like that kid, I’ve got a girl I’m going after. You’ve got two moping Jaeger pilots to deal with,” Tendo holds out his hand, it takes him a moment, but Zayn grasps it. 

“We’ll be on each other more in the future, and no more sending people out alone,” he pumps their hands twice.

“Go get ‘em tiger.”

Zayn isn’t quite sure where he lost the conversation, but he leaves before Tendo tries to help him find it.

\---

He finds Louis and Liam helping Mako with the very beginnings of martial arts training. Pentecost had already gone through a fair few of the starting positions, but watching Liam gently guiding her through her first shaky katas warms Zayn’s heart to the core. 

“We’ll make sure you can protect yourself, eh love?” Louis makes sure to reposition her hands a little higher before she goes into a punch. 

“You’ll be one of the greatest Jaeger pilots of them all,” Liam says, before swooping Mako into his arms and throwing her into the air; her shrieks of laughter echoing through the room. Zayn watches as Louis hand goes to rest at the small of Liam’s back, intimate. His heart aches.

“I think you’ll be great enough to close The Breach,” Zayn can’t help but say, and while he notices when Louis and Liam tense up, they manage to smooth out their reactions in order to assure Mako that she will be the very best and that her copilot will love her because she is amazing. 

They get Mako through the rest of her kata before ushering her off to find some people that she can show it off to. 

The room goes silent, Mako’s laughter a long forgotten sound. 

“I’m so-”

“No,” Zayn shuts up. Does what Niall says, allows them to be angry at him. 

“What is the most important thing about this war?” Liam’s never looked so severe. He and Louis are both waiting for an answer.

“That we fight together,” Zayn repeats dutifully. He knows how badly he’s failed them, that it may have been two lives but to Liam and Louis it’s two people who would’ve lived if Zayn hadn’t been stupid.

“You know better than anyone how the Kaiju are evolving, how every time we encounter them they’ve got some new trick up their sleeve. You know this,” Zayn can only nod weakly at Louis, because he does know this. 

“So, we love you to pieces Zayn, but right now you’ve broken the most important rule so we’re going to be mad at you. Not forever, but for long enough,” Louis and Liam are moving toward Zayn in sink, and both lean down and kiss one of Zayn’s cheeks. 

“So give us some time,” they say in tandem.

“I’ll give you all the time you need,” and then Zayn’s alone. 

\---

He’s in Hong Kong to pick up some supplies and send a couple letters to his family back home when the alarm sounds through the city. Zayn has no idea whether it’s a drill, a proximity alarm, or whether an actual Kaiju is near, but the sudden rush of people has him feeling dizzy with nerves. It’s one thing to be in the Shatterdome and in as much control of the situation as a person can be, it’s another to be on the ground and totally helpless.

The good news is that the city’s gotten enough alerts about a possible Kaiju attack that everyone’s pretty well organised as they quickly file into the various underground shelters. Zayn’s never used one, but they’re pretty tightly packed, and as soon as he’s in he knows he’d rather not be there.

The wait is an hour long, but the unmistakable shakes of a Jaeger going one on one with a Kaiju is more than enough evidence that this is no drill. Zayn waits impatiently with everyone else, Cantonese, Mandarin, and various other dialects that Zayn speaks only a small amount of whispered amongst the other occupants as they wait to see if the world will end.

It’s an hour later, and when the doors to the refuge open, everyone acts as though they’ve just had a small interruption to their day. 

The televisions that had been left on in stores and in apartments, however, blare the announcement of a beautiful new Jaeger, one that had three arms, an incredible new development. TVs flashed pictures of the pilots, triplets, but Zayn’s Cantonese wasn’t good enough to catch their names. He hopes that he gets a chance to meet them.

\---

When he finally manages a ride back to the Shatterdome, he’s bowled over sideways when Louis slams into him, saved only because Liam manages to half catch them.

“Don’t do that again you bloody sod, Jesus when those first couple of buildings went down and we weren’t sure where you were,” Louis’ arms tighten around Zayn’s shoulders as he presses kisses to Zayn’s shoulders and neck. Liam’s arms are tight around the two of them.

“I honestly thought my heart was going to stop,” Liam whispers into his hair.

“Um… I’m okay. Apparently there’s a new Jaeger piloted by triplets?” Zayn can’t help the excitement that seeps into his voice. 

Liam’s chuckle vibrates through Zayn from where the man is pressed against his back, but Louis pulls off, a scowl on his face as he shakes Zayn a little.

“I can’t believe you’re choosing this moment to fanboy over Rangers and their Jaeger. We’re trying to make sure you aren’t dead here Zayn,” He gives Zayn another shake. 

“I’m very sure I’m not dead. If you’re concerned about my love of Rangers and their Jaegers, just know that you and Liam will always be number one,” Louis’ face breaks into a sunny smile and Liam presses a kiss into his hair.

“Alright, but if you ever are in trouble again Liam and I are going to be the ones responsible for saving you capiche?” 

“We’ll be your copilots, okay Zayn?” Zayn nods.

“And just to clear the air we’re both desperately in love with you and it’s actually becoming a pain to drift with Liam because all we can both remember is stuff about you and it becomes one giant feedback loop that’s half heart boner, half regular boner,” Zayn’s entire face scrunches up with laughter.

“I love you both too,” he manages through the laughter, grinning hard when Liam and Louis plant sloppy kisses on both his cheeks and drag him off to be smothered with affection by two competent, gorgeous Rangers.

**Author's Note:**

> All three of them survive the end of the Kaiju war. I don't know how, I just know they do.


End file.
